Porsche 911 Mega-Gallery from Rennsport Reunion V

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Since its debut at the Frankfurt motor show 52 years ago, the Porsche 911 has been an icon of performance. If you’re reading this page, chances are about 50/50 that you own or have owned a 911 at some point in your storied career. Chances are 99.9 percent that you want to own one. (You other 0.1 percenters will want to redirect your browsers to camrygoldkit.com now.)

Throughout its history the 911 has been a car that rewarded skilled hands at the wheel and, in its earlier configurations, punished those who did not respect the terrifying oversteer that a rear-engined car could extract. With all the weight that could be transferred to the rear wheel under hard acceleration, the 911 could offer grip on acceleration that was unmatched by competitors. Likewise, if you knew just how to do it, you could exit corners faster than anyone else, too, and even use the rear-heavy balance to rotate the car through turns. But woe be to the drive chump who went into a corner wrong, panicked, lifted off suddenly in a pathetic attempt to appease the gods of momentum, and found him- or herself bouncing backward across the gravel, praying for runoff.

Later models addressed all those dangers.

As we noted in our “history of the 911” two years ago, the first 911 was an evolution of the Volkswagen-derived Porsche 356. Conceived as a bigger four-seat 356, the 911 became an all-new car featuring a new chassis with MacPherson struts, semi-trailing arms and torsion bars, and a brand-new air-cooled, OHC flat-six, initially making 128 hp from 1,991cc in stock form. The styling was the work of Ferdinand Alexander “Butzi” Porsche. It echoed the 356's familiar fastback silhouette, but it turned out to be a timeless design.

After some coaxing of Ferdinand Piech by Vic Elford, who raced 911s to victory in rallies and on road courses, the 911 transformed into a race car and hasn’t stopped winning since.

There were more 911s (and 930s, 935s and all the other spinoffs) at Rennsport than any other Porsche, by far, a testament to the car’s enduring popularity. There were 911s on the track all weekend from every year of the car’s 52 years. We picked out some nice ones here. Maybe your car is in the gallery. The later models seemed to be more popular in the paddock, with 993s to the horizon, but there were many earlier cars out there dicing, too.